The player

A new 'educational' game teaches you the source codes, writes CIARA O'BRIEN

GAME companies have always been happy to champion those studies which show that, far from turning kids into brainless, obese zombies, games can actually be educational and good for you. Now a new, long-in- the-works title takes educational gaming to an even more practical level.

Billed as a "co-op first- person science shooter", Code Heroteaches you how to actually create your own videogame while you play.

Like many games before it, the developers have disguised the title’s educational bent behind a storyline. In this case, it’s something we’ve seen on our screens many times before: some AI code has gone rogue and you have to stop it. To do so, you need a JavaScript gunto manipulate the world around you. Your ammunition, naturally, is code.

It sounds complex, but the makers, PrimerLabs, say you don’t have to know anything about code to play the game, and that it’s designed for complete beginners. Inevitably, you do pick up some code skills on the way. Although you can simply copy new items with the “gun”, you can also edit code to make it do new things, build structures and generally create your very own video game. There are challenges you need to conquer, include a “FizzBots” challenge, and to successfully pass these you’ll need to learn a little bit of code.

It’s an interesting way of approaching it, but it also imparts some skills that are becoming more and more important in today’s digitally focused world.

In its blurb for the games, PrimerLabs says that “code is one of the sciences that defines the innovations of our age and shapes our moment-to-moment experience of Internet-using lives. In a world where we all use code, it is time for us to learn to read and write it so that we become not merely consumers but also creators and participants in digital democracy.”